Hoffman shines in murky spy thriller
Actor shows us a man teetering on the brink
A Most Wanted Man
★★★ Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Rachel McAdams Directed by: Anton Corbijn Running time: 122 minutes
He plays a man betrayed by his country and his colleagues, but in one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances, it’s the Judas kiss of time that proves most tragic.
Taking on the timely role of a German counter-terrorist operative in director Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel, Hoffman shows us a man teetering on the brink.
Günther Bachmann (Hoffman) was clearly a true believer and a patriot when he first started in the spy game back in the black-and-white days of the Cold War.
But without a formal enemy who carries the flag of a nation in his bayonet, Günther and his colleagues have had to adapt to an ugly reality.
They spy on everyone now. A mere hint of suspicion is enough to warrant a van full of electronic eavesdropping equipment to be parked outside your house, which is sort of where we meet Günther at the top of the reel.
Holed up inside his secret underground spy station outfitted with video monitors, Günther learns about the arrival of a Chechen
Tugging on our current understanding of his offcamera life, Hoffman serves up what feels like a truly naked, and entirely committed performance: Overweight, chain-smoking and prone to ignoring his superiors, Günther bears the scars of a man beaten into submission.
We learn that on his previous posting, his entire team was compromised, leading to several deaths that could have been prevented.
Günther feels their blood on his hands because he promised his people he would protect them, just as he promises to protect the people harbouring the Chechen.
One of those people is Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), an idealistic young lawyer who wants to help the Chechen in his bid for asylum. It all seems straightforward.
Then we learn the Chechen’s father was a Russian commander with a huge bank account.
If he gets the money from the banker (Willem Dafoe), he could fund terrorist operations throughout Europe, raising the ante in the catand-mouse chase, and putting the screws to Günther’s whole team.
It’s as good a yarn as any le Carré plot, and in Corbijn’s hands the material finds a true ally because the former music-mag photographer’s gritty esthetic lines up with le Carré’s seemingly random — but highly structured — tone.
Not only is it difficult to decipher exactly what is happening in each scene, it’s difficult to figure out who’s telling the truth and who is lying through their teeth.
Both Corbijn and le Carré insist on keeping things ambiguous so as to put the viewer in the same position as Günther — slightly uncertain about everyone and everything.
Günther has experience to help him out, and we have Hollywood tradition, but both paths inevitably lead us astray because each grid of beliefs comes with a builtin sense of morality that no longer exists, and that’s really the whole point of this somewhat meandering, and frustratingly murky espionage thriller.
It’s about a man who keeps getting pricked by his own moral compass while those around him navigate by the disembodied voice of auto-command.